Making False Claims About Taxonomic Relations

Martin & Rose (2007: 103):

taxonomic relations show how processes expect each other in an activity sequence, and how expectancy shifts from one phase to the next.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this was not demonstrated in the discussion of taxonomic relations (pp76-90).

[2] To be clear, taxonomic relations are presented as relations between lexical items, whereas processes are grammatical functions.  That is, Martin & Rose confuse lexis with grammar and present the confusion as discourse semantics.

[3] To be clear, processes don't "expect" each other, because they are not conscious beings.  If the metaphor is unpacked, then the claim is that someone expects one process to follow another, on the basis of a relation between the lexical items serving as the processes.  This person is clearly not the speaker, but the addressee(s) or a discourse analyst.  That is, the metaphor conceals the fact that this is not a model of language, but a model of listening to, reading or analysing language.

[4] To be clear, even ignoring the fact that this expectancy is a mental process of the addressee or linguist, and the fact that taxonomic relations confuse lexical items with grammatical functions, this claim of expectancy shift is falsified by any instances in which taxonomic relations between processes obtain between different phases of a text, or do not obtain within a phase of a text.